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Recently, I found myself spending time with an acquaintance who has always been in the same social network as me, but for whatever reason, never became a solid “friend” in the way other women in that network had. A married mother of three, she was understandably preoccupied with running her household and caring for her children. Since my lifestyle choice doesn’t require me to consult with a spouse and be confined to the complex schedules of three different little people, our schedules rarely matched and thus, we didn’t get together often. Our acquaintanceship was comfortable for us both and though we found ourselves with some down time on the same day, I was prepared for this isolated incident to not occur again in the near future.

I was en route to another commitment and though I was happy to connect with her, I reiterated during our hang time, “Girl, I’m having fun, but I really need to get running so I’m not late.” And then she did what married mothers who I’ve been friendly with over the years have done on more than one occasion. She made a casual comment that I was always off to somewhere else. Always doing something and thus never having time to hang out with her. When she was ready to hang out, that is. I chuckled and said, “Ya know, we all have overbooked lives in these complicated times. It is what it is.” She went on to bemoan only having this one night available and then admitting what I’ve always known mothers of this mindset have always felt but never vocalized. “I rely on my single friends to remind me what it’s like to have fun and enjoy nightlife on those rare occasions when I’m free.”

In that moment, I felt irritated.

“They want to put us on a shelf and then expect us to just be waiting happily when they find time to take us off that shelf.” Jasmine, a woman who is single by circumstance and childfree by choice has had this same conversation with long time friends whose lives shifted once they took on marriage and motherhood. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why after years of having some version of this conversation with friends who took on families, it bothered me now. To be clear, I was not bothered because my acquaintance had prioritized her family over me. I would find it odd had she made the opposite choice. I expected that even my good girlfriends would have less time to hang out with me once they married and had children. I didn’t begrudge them their decision to make a lifestyle choice that resulted in having to devote 85% of their energy only to the people who lived in their house. What I was taking issue with was this acquaintance’s suggestion that to be single was to be willing to serve as your married friend’s Plan B. In this arrangement, you are supposed to take it as compliment when your married friend with children, who has much more important things to do, puts you on her as-soon-as-I-can shelf until she has less important things to do and comes back to get you.

When I told my acquaintance just how tedious and condescending such a role was for ANY woman, she seemed shocked. It never occurred to her that what she was expecting of her single, childfree friends is exactly what the men she had dated before her husband expected of her and all other single women. To be patient as they were put on the shelf while he sorted out his super busy life that made it impossible for him to plan a date or return a phone call until his schedule dictated either were important enough to him. And when he made this momentous decision…when he didn’t have to be out of town for a weekend or work late or coddle a potential client or ___ and he called with the sudden desire to “see your beautiful face right now — in the next five minutes,” he was perturbed when you said you had other things to do. “But I finally have 17 free minutes to give you. Why aren’t you accommodating me?”

This notion that because you are an adult female who has not taken on children and a spouse, you are by default the one who should be readily available to anyone who desires your time is insulting. It is also ridiculous when you consider the increasing number of women who are choosing to remain single well into midlife. We are nearly a quarter of the way into the 21st century. Surely, it shouldn’t be a surprise to the world at large that women who don’t choose marriage and motherhood actually have committed their post-work hours to a whole host of fulfilling activities. Things they value and consider top priority with just as much fervor as their married peers cherish family time.

We don’t expect our married friends who are parents to be our Plan B. We don’t try to guilt them into submission when we ask them to go to an art opening and they say they can’t because they have other obligations. We often make effort to adjust to their new reality of suddenly ill offspring, no-show babysitters and spouses who need them more than we do. We do this without any expectation that they will return the favor. And many of us understand that their lives as parents make it difficult to do so, anyway. We don’t take it personally because we know it has nothing to do with us. It is about their choice to take on the role of parent and spouse. A lot of us simply anticipate the friendship going through a cooling off period and maybe once the children are older, there will be a reconnection. A renegotiation perhaps. Or maybe not. Since we would have nurtured interpersonal relationships with others in the absence of the one we lost, it just may be that the friendship dies off without ceremony or incidence.

What precious few of us are willing to do is be the shelf warmer, though. Yes, we know you really want to still maintain the connection, but you’re being pulled in so many directions. No, we don’t hold it against you because you aren’t able to spend more than a few minutes catching up with us before running off to deal with a minor catastrophe somewhere in your house. You have valid reasons for not having time for us.

And like the eligible bachelor who has legitimate reasons for never following through on his vague suggestions that he would love to get together sometime, we won’t be placing you high on our priority list, either. There is no ill will. No animosity. If Busy Bachelor has prioritized all these other things over us, good for him! While he is doing whatever it is that is keeping him busy, we will carry on with our lives. When he calls with an urge to see us because he now has an opening in his schedule, it should be no surprise to him that he will have to go back to his busy life because we have one, too.

Again, this should not be news to anyone: Single women are not the secondhand books that you found in your favorite used bookstore and have every intention of reading — eventually. Perhaps? When/If the spirit moves you. We are fully realized human beings with expansive lives and commitments. We are not quaint reminders of your once carefree life, default place holders for when spouses are on business trips or fantastical escapes from the mundane domestic life you really do enjoy, but just want a break from every now and again.

We are more than willing to still be your friend. What we won’t be is your Plan B. There are too many others who are willing to make space for us. It defies logic to expect us to wait around for that rare moment when you need us to free you from your life and then never really speak to us until you need to siphon off our energy again.

This is not the first time I have written about PoseFx, the most significant television series to make its way into the pop culture psyche in recent history. I doubt this will be the last time an episode compels me to head straight for my keyboard, either. Aside from its glorious costuming, perfect balance of melodrama and nuanced performances, AND Billy Porter, PoseFx does not make the mistake of simply presenting New York City ballroom culture and the trans community as the exotic other. PoseFx (and likely, its producer, Janet Mock) is clear on its mission: YOU. WILL. SEE. US. AS. HUMAN.

On a recent episode, Life’s A Beach, I found myself near tears again. (It’s happened to me more times than I care to mention while watching this show.) While on a weekend get away an hour out of the city, Elektra, Angel, Lulu and Blanca end their day at the beach with dinner and cocktails at a high class restaurant. It is one of those joints that prides itself on its white linen table cloths and matching white people. Both making it clear that four transwomen from The Bronx don’t belong there. When one of its regular clientele comes over to explicitly state what the table cloths and pale patrons have tried to subtly suggest, Elektra reads this monied, arrogant white woman for filth. A take down so full in its totality and depth that she has to pause in the middle and take a sip of wine in order to properly “read that bitch.”

While there were so many incredible sound bites in that read, the one that stuck with me was: “We fought for our place at this table.” Elektra’s point being that simply because this woman had been born with a uterus and the accouterments of a privileged white lady didn’t mean she was entitled to claim the descriptor of “woman” anymore than the four women who were minding their damn business when they were confronted with yet another person who demanded they prove their worth. Their right to exist.

When the white lady follows Elektra’s command and scurries back to her table, the scene continues and we are presented with the most damning evidence that Elektra is exactly right: She has earned the title of woman more than any of the cis women in that restaurant, the Bronx, the city, the world. Blanca shares with her friends that she has been offered a chance to go on an evening stroll along the beach with a handsome life guard who had, several scenes before, saved her from drowning. Elektra immediately warns her not to accept the date, asking, “You told him no, right?” Her friends’ excitement for her chance at love immediately turns into fear.

“You can’t trust him at night by yourself.”

It is unspoken because there’s no need to say it. He, a cis man who has not been told that Blanca is a transwoman, should not be given the benefit of the doubt. While Lulu, Elektra and Angel had been goading Blanca since season one to take her love life more seriously and teased her throughout the day about the connection she felt with the life guard after he’d saved her, the moment she said she would be spending more than five minutes alone with him at night, each of these women wanted her to pump the brakes on the courtship.

She could end up dead. He would most likely hurt her. IF she chose to disclose that she was not “a real woman,” instead of just bidding her adieu and leaving her on the beach, he could very likely strangle her for making him become attracted to her and her “unnatural femininity.” If Blanca did go through with the date, she could enjoy a romantic, moonlit walk on a pristine Long Island beach or she could end up brutally murdered and disposed of in the rolling tides, her body left to wash up on shore a few hours later.

Elektra and the women surrounding her at that table were constantly cognizant of male violence. It was the first thing they considered when an innocent proposition to take a walk was offered. “You can’t just have coffee with him tomorrow afternoon before we leave?,” Lulu asked Blanca with a forced chuckle and smile.

If there is no other signifier of womanhood, it is the acute awareness that you can be the victim of male rage for reasons unclear to you and in moments when you have little to no resources to protect yourself. If you ask women how often they consider the possibility of being the victim of a man who felt entitled to take out his rage on their body, many of us would have a handful of moments at the very least, a couple of tangible experiences that still haunt us at the most. There might be a small minority of us who claim no past memory of the sharp fear that takes hold of your body when you realize you are on an isolated beach with a man you just met who has been a perfect gentleman, but something about the way he just looked at you, the sound in his voice when he called you sexy makes you wonder if you were too naive, too trusting after only a few hours of pleasant conversation with this stranger.

The women of PoseFx are not only women. They are transwomen. They are black and brown transwomen. Every moment of their lives is curated to make it easy for male violence to find a place to rest comfortably. No questions asked. No accountability expected. Only a few episodes before, Candy, their house daughter and ballroom competitor, was beaten to death in a filthy motel room after a sexual encounter turned violent. Earlier in this season, a secondary character relayed a story of servicing a john in his car and having him turn violent, knocking her teeth out. When the police showed up, she was brought to jail and abused. He drove off and went home to his family.

The most telling moment in Life’s a Beach is when Blanca says she is tired of allowing her choices to be led by fear and will go for the walk with the handsome life guard. Elektra admonishes her to protect herself and pulls out a knife from her purse. “Take this with you.” Lulu and Angel follow suit, pulling out a taser and a set of brass knuckles. It is played as a funny moment. A light hearted way to show us “real men and women” just how often these transwomen have come close to death. Just how much of their brain power is used to ensure the next time it happens, they will escape it alive like the last.

When Elektra pulled out the knife, I recalled the times I’ve walked home from my subway station after midnight, gripping my key tightly in between my thumb and forefinger so I could use it to poke an attacker in the eye if I had to. The appearance of more serious weaponry from Lulu and Angel only confirmed the reality that these women knew a world even more terrifying than I ever would. The amount of effort that goes into avoiding male violence is bothersome, but for the most part, it remains in the periphery of my life. If I were Elektra, would I have such a luxury?

“They don’t kill us because they hate us,” she explains to Blanca. “They kill us because of what it means to love us.”

If you want to know how the world teaches you to expect to be the outlet for male rage, ask any woman. If you want to know what it feels like to expect that you will be the outlet for a rage that surfaces when a man must confront what his attraction to you reveals about him, ask a black transwoman. Ask her to take you through the fear of knowing that at any given moment you can become the victim of violent rage because a man who has perceived his attraction to you as pathology now must kill it by killing you.

I suggest you start your research soon because another another black transwoman will lose her life to male rage by the time you are done reading this sentence.

I suppose I should start with the truth: I come from a fractured family. Though still in communication with every member of my immediate family, months can go by when I have not talked to any of them. My mother, my sister and definitely not my brothers.

I noticed my family’s distance as early as elementary school. I grew up well aware that while other kids in my class would probably spend at least one weekend over the summer at a family reunion or cook out in a humid park somewhere, I really could not recall any memories of cousins, aunts and uncles gathered together under a matriarch’s roof - the whole extended family reenacting its own version of the final scene in Soul Food. Neither my mother nor father seemed to have deep connections with family members beyond their own parents. In some ways, that disconnect has continued among their own children.

Perhaps this is why I can’t find words accurate enough to describe my connection to Pose, FX’s groundbreaking series about 1980s Ball culture in New York City. I was enthralled from the first episode when Blanca stalks through Washington Square Park looking for someone to co-opt as her own. As her family. She finds a young Damon sleeping on a bench because his own fractured family threw him away with an ease that baffles me. Their conversation is casual yet poignant. Blanca tells Damon she has seen how well he dances when he practices during the day. She tells him she, a woman who has just been given a reason to live after being informed she would soon die, is starting her own house and she wants it to be more than just a collection of trans women competing for their next Ball trophy. “I want it to be a real family where we all look out for each other.”

Her house becomes just that. She not only commits herself to taking care of Damon emotionally and financially, she extends her care to Pray Tell, father figure to pretty much every character on the show, and a number of impulsive young adults who have no one else to offer them a warm bed and even warmer heart when the world clearly states: “Your life means nothing to me.”
Pose is a tribute to chosen family. And it brings tears to my eyes just thinking about the beauty in such a simple premise.

My family would never throw me away the way Damon’s family did. I can’t imagine my mother kicking me, a teenaged child, out of her house for any reason. And if she did lose her mind enough to do it, my own mind can’t process my father not coming to my suddenly ill mother’s home to collect me and my belongings. I can’t think of any reason why my siblings would tell their children I am dead when I am living and breathing a train ride away.

Though I can’t relate to the specific fracture in Damon’s and Blanca’s biological families, I can understand the longing to create a family of their own choosing. A family that understands them and accepts them in a way their bio families can’t. It goes without saying that none of the characters on Pose want to have to choose their family. In their quiet moments, they are candid about how much the rejection of their families still cut them to the core. They long for the connection they have with their chosen family to be mirrored with the bio family members who have tossed them aside. Blanca, particularly, deals with an incredible amount of emotional abuse from her siblings just to attend the funeral of her mother, whose only tool for dealing with a son who knew he was really a daughter was to banish her child from her life.

For those of us who have come to rely more on our chosen family than our bio one, Pose is the ultimate testament to family being much broader, much bigger than just the people with whom you share DNA and a house. In one season, The Evangelistas comforted one of their own as she repeatedly got her heart broken by a white man so white he could have been on a box of oatmeal, showed up to an HIV ward to stare their future in the face because their chosen father needed them to, demanded a prominent dance institute give their frightened son and brother another chance to audition for an opportunity that would save his life, and held each other accountable for looking out for a vulnerable family member when they had valid reasons not to bother.

I can’t remember the last time the big or small screen has offered such a heart breaking, exquisite portrayal of family. Yes, each episode Billy Porter delivers superb extraness, holding nothing back as he allows us a peek into a world we never knew existed. And the costumes and Ball scenes are themselves worthy of their own show. However, if Pose is to be praised for nothing else, I say we should be up on our feet, clapping like deranged seals because it graciously provides us the prototype for and a comprehensive definition of family.

A conversation that went real deep real quick prompted me to air the recent episode of my podcast. I spotted a young woman I had met through a mutual friend in a cafe and went over to say hello. She had just come from visiting her mother who lived in the area and wanted to grab something to eat before she got back on the subway to go to her own place.

I don’t think she meant to share so much with a casual acquaintance she had just met a few days before at a friend’s birthday party. But, I was soon to learn that most of the conversations she had with her mother left her emotionally wrecked and she often escaped them having not bothered to eat whatever meal her mother had prepared or even stay longer to spend time with her father. I noticed she seemed shook within minutes of my “Hey, Girl. Nice to see you again.”

In short, this woman is destroyed each and every time she leaves her mother’s presence. The mother criticizes, judges and berates the young woman who has managed to reach her late twenties without securing a job that her parents can brag to their friends about, a husband that they can brag to their friends about or even a life as a single, middle class lady that the mother would feel justified all the money she and her husband had spent to send their only child to the United States to study at an elite university.

As she apologized for unloading her frustrations on someone with whom she had just become acquainted, I assured her that she was not burdening me. That I, like many adult children, have a complex relationship with my mother, too. This is normal. However, the more this young woman shared snippets of her interactions with her mother, the more I realized what she was describing was an abusive relationship with a manipulative bully.

“Maybe you should stop doing this to yourself and not communicate with her anymore,” I suggested. I was not surprised by her response.

“I can’t just stop talking to my mother.”

When I asked her why she could not stop allowing herself to be bullied by a woman who seemed to spend a great amount of their time together making her feel like crap, she supplied another unsurprising retort: “Well, she’s my mother…”

On the show, Gail Howell talks about how long she held on to the same ideal. I cannot just stop talking to my mother. I owe her my life. Though she is now making that life unlivable, I owe her my silent submission. By the time Gail found the courage to sever her and her mother’s relationship, she had spent thirty-seven years believing that she was obligated to deal with an incredible amount of emotional abuse and casual disregard because it was meted out by the woman she called mom.

I have often said the way we’ve created a special deity category for women who choose motherhood does more harm than good. It harms the children of the women who use the role as an all-access pass to treat the human beings they have birthed cavalierly. It also harms the women themselves as it takes away the very necessary accountability all humans must face when they allow their lesser selves to lead when engaging with humans who have been trained to believe a deity figure is above reproach.

Over the years, I’ve talked to women whose mothers have charged major purchases to their credit cards without their permission, repeatedly criticized them for decisions that it was their right to make and burdened them with “You need to do this for me right now because I want it done right now.” They all just let these things go, citing, “She’s my mother” as the reason why behaviors that would warrant a polite read at the very least should just be endured silently. The woman whose credit was nearly ruined by her mother took on a few extra shifts at work so she could pay off the debt her mother had created and never bothered to tell her about.

We joke about it all the time. “Girl, my mama be tripping, but ya know…that’s just how mamas are.” And around this time of year there is no shortage of posts touting “my mama is god on earth and I will fall at her feet until the day she dies” running all up and down the timelines of many women who want to initiate a conversation with their mothers about that cruel thing she did or those harsh words she said or repeated cruel things she does or harsh words she says that continue to hurt. Some of these women just want to say, “What you did was not cool.” Yet, so much of the culture surrounding mother worship makes it blasphemous for a child of any age to even make this, the most benign of complaints, against the woman who chose to raise her.

Yes, mothers choose a difficult job. The key word in this sentence is choose. I applaud anyone who chooses a path that is fraught with challenge because they feel it will give their life meaning and focus. However, the choice to mother should not be awarded such adulation that it becomes impossible to even fathom a woman’s child holding that woman accountable for poor treatment the same way she would demand accountability from a boyfriend who had treated her with similar disregard.

We do not need to demonize mothers just to remove the deity-like worship many cultures award them. They don’t have to be stripped of well-deserved applause and appreciation for their sacrifices in order to create a culture where their children are encouraged to reject them and their abuse in the same way they are taught to reject anyone whose actions repeatedly wound them. I propose we make mothers human. And afford them the same expectations for how they treat us as we do with others. How about we treat them as neither deities nor demons? Just mere mortals who made a conscious choice to mother. Mortals, regardless of lifestyle choices, are held up to the same expectations in how they treat others. Mothers deserve to be held to the same standard as the rest of us.

As a woman of a certain age, I am pretty confident that not only do I know who I am, but I own who I am. The good, the bad and the indifferent. Though I’ve written about my personal choices for the enlightenment of others for years, I own I am a deeply private person who chooses with intention to whom I will expose myself. Though I make myself available to love, I own I am most content when left alone. Though I have fed my insatiable wanderlust with a collection of passport stamps and privileged opportunities all over the world, I own that I value the comfort of a steady income and a stable sister circle of black women who accept my type of crazy. Like any gemini, I am layer on top of layer. And for decades, I have peeled back each, ending up here: at peace and in love with the woman who I began becoming somewhere in my late teens.

To be clear: writing the book is not what brought me to the epiphany that there were still more layers to unravel. Writing the book came pretty easy. It felt so much like breathing that I had a decent first draft in under a year.

It has only been these last few months leading up to publication that it has occurred to me I underestimated how much I do not enjoy inauthentic interactions. How much social media feels like one massive inauthentic interaction, even when you are being your authentic self.

I do not like to expose myself unless I can control who sees me. Unless I get to craft how they see me.

Because it is 2019 and I am a new author, social media interactions seem to be a requirement if I want anyone other than my mama and homegirls to buy my book (and my mama expects a free copy). I have been playing around on Facebook for about a decade. I became acquainted with Instagram and Twitter through my messing around with Facebook, but had only really given them cursory attention until my publicity manager made me cozy up more to these tedious little sites. I never thought of these platforms as tools for anything other than…well, playing around whenever I felt like going outside.

This is what I discovered when I was told “Use social media way more than you already do.” I am an inside kid. I have always been an inside kid. I was not one of those adventurers who eagerly awaited the day in summer camp when we went hiking or camping or some other such outdoorsy activity that was meant to challenge city kids to go beyond their comfort zones. I relished arts and crafts day when campers stayed inside in an air conditioned facility and expressed themselves on their own time and in their own space unless they felt inclined to invite in others. Apparently, these outdoorsy activities must happen on and off line a lot if I am ever to become known enough to get an email from Toni Morrison inviting me to her house for lunch.

What promoting this book has taught me is though a gregarious extrovert, I am not a person who likes to be seen. I wrote a book. In that book, I showed you Keturah. I said, “Hey, here I go with some thoughts and tings. Okay, bye.” I truly do not understand why people would now want me to show more of myself in order to get to know the woman who wrote the book. She. Is. In. The. Book. I get little satisfaction from showing more, actually. I will do it (on my own terms) because I know it is necessary. However, there is a significant part of me that finds it counterintuitive. Such exposure does not come naturally to me.

Shortly after going outside online, people started inviting me outside in real life, too. “Can you moderate a panel on women’s day?” “Can I ask you a few questions about traveling abroad, being unmarried, etc.?” “We want to feature you in this storytelling series.” It was these opportunities to promote myself that forced me to see it wasn’t just social media I found exhausting. It was being seen. It was being asked questions I didn’t particularly want to answer. It was being outside. Period.

At 44, I am forced to own: I have an intense need to control every aspect of my life. I wrote a book. I told people what I wanted to tell them in that book. And now, these people want me to tell them other stuff? But, why? I said what I said. Now, I’d like to take my many strips of colorful twine and construct my friendship bracelet quietly over here in the corner, please. Just come get me when it’s snack time.

I suppose I should be happy that there are still parts of me I don’t know know. This means I won’t run out of self improvement goals any time soon. I should also be grateful for the invitations to play outside. This must mean people like what I have to say when I get up on my soapbox. They must enjoy what is seen when I choose to show myself.

I have decided not to wait for the day when I will enjoy this process myself. Because I doubt that day will ever come. What I will do is own that it requires me to stretch myself in ways that I wouldn’t have had to had I not written this book.

Thursday, the camp counselor says we are going to some place far away and will do something called hiking and then practice pitching a tent or some such. I have chosen not to fake like I’m sick Wednesday afternoon. I will get on the bus Thursday morning. That is all I can promise to do.

My first solo trip was to Atlanta. I was recently out of college and already dissatisfied with the unfulfilled promises of adulthood my teenaged self had dreamt up with vigor as I lived in my head throughout middle and high school. I had a job that was so inconsequential I struggle now to remember where exactly I worked and what I was doing. I had heard that Atlanta was some sort of Black Promised Land and had never left New Orleans long enough to fully appreciate that I was from and currently residing in the actual Black (Cultural) Promised Land so…

I woke up one morning and announced, “I’m going to Atlanta.”

I did not expect the commentary that followed. “You going all the way to Atlanta…by yourself?” It was the emphasis on the all the way that caught my attention first. To reach Atlanta from New Orleans, all one had to do was get on I-95 and then roughly eight hours later get off I-95, right? It took the second or third raised eyebrow for me to even hear the by yourself part. My mom and dad, of course, were supposed to be concerned about me getting in my car by myself and driving all the way to the neighbouring state of Georgia. I was their youngest child. A girlchild at that. Though level headed and responsible, I leaned toward impulsiveness sometimes. So, the imagined trouble I could find myself in was a reasonable response from my parents.

However, the by yourself from the mouths of friends and close acquaintances surprised me. I was asked if I worried about being bored or lonely for those seventy-two hours I would spend in the city. I was told that I should consider waiting until at least one other person could come along. “Safety in numbers,” a couple of friends said. Rapists, kidnappers and women beaters could be lurking anywhere within those 400 miles and that was not even to mention the men who were out to get me once I actually arrived in the city of Atlanta itself. “Don’t tell anyone you are alone,” a friend advised as I stuffed some clothes into a duffle bag. “Be safe,” I was told as I drove off. “What are you doing now? All by yourself?,” was a recurring question in the emails I opened once I got to the youth hostel where I would stay and logged on to let everyone know I had not been kidnapped since they last saw me.

In the twenty years since I returned from Atlanta, unimpressed and unmolested, I have traveled alone both domestically and internationally so many times I have to now force myself to at least make effort to include other people before simply booking a flight. Though not from friends who’ve known me since the Atlanta trip, I still get the by yourself question often enough that it makes me wonder why a woman traveling alone seems odd. Given it is the year 2019, and though violence against women is a very real concern in many parts of the world, one would assume that a female adult visiting a new locale without the accessory of husband, child or wing woman is not such an abnormality.

“Several times when I’ve checked into a hotel the staff were super concerned,” Ambra, a western woman currently living in China, said. “Like I’m there to kill myself or because I am depressed just because I’m by myself.” She went on to tell the story of a staff member coming out to the pool once just to see if she really were okay. Another time, (mostly) female employees chatted her up at breakfast, voicing well intended concern that she might be alone for some other reason than she wanted to be alone.

Natavia, an American expat currently living in China, had her announcement of an international move met with stories of sex trafficking throughout Asia. “They kept saying ‘Don’t Go!’ and asking me if I knew anyone here and when I said no, they’d come up with even crazier stuff.” Though the anxieties of her loved ones did make Natavia hesitant, she had a cousin who had solo traveled extensively and lived overseas alone. The cousin was curt. “Ignore them. Move to China.”

We know everyone means well when they ask us if we are sure we want to journey to a foreign destination alone. And we are also well aware that the dangers they imagine for us are not that far from the realm of possibility. However, those dangers are not that far from the realm of possibility when we travel to and from work in the same city where we’ve lived all our lives. Rapists rape in New Orleans during the day and night. Women take meticulous care not to get themselves raped from the time their parents find the courage to send them out the house without adult supervision until they inhale their last breathe. Kidnappers operate from the same playbook all over the world and there seems to be no fool-proof plan not to get yourself kidnapped when a professional kidnapper has decided he will — today and at this moment — kidnap. When people have asked me if I were afraid of getting trafficked or drugged or disappeared when I’ve traveled to India or Senegal or South Africa or Malaysia, I’ve always chuckled and said, “Well, if I’ve managed not to have any of those things happen to me here, then I’ll just keep that same energy in this other place. Maybe, I’ll get the same result.”

Even greater than concern for the female solo traveler’s safety is bewilderment about why she would choose to be alone on a travel adventure in the first place. After dozens of by yourself inquiries, I started to hear what people were really saying. And it was not tied just to imagined scenes of me being violated and thrown into a ditch. The visions of me touring city monuments alone. A quick flash of me eating the local cuisine alone in a restaurant filled with people. Taking pictures in front of famous landmarks. No one standing next to me. My friends and loved ones were not as forthcoming about their uneasiness regarding my aloneness. Sometimes I’d be asked if I ever got bored and lonely. When I’d respond that these emotions did occur and I just felt them the way I felt all the others until they passed, I’d be met with curious stares and silence.

“Truth is, I don’t ever feel alone unless I want to.” Latasha, who is originally from Cleveland, but has lived in three different countries since moving overseas, plans her solo trips to give her the option of interacting with others if she chooses. She loves talking with the locals in the countries she visits and her singleness makes that easier to do. She is often viewed as easier to approach because there is no one there distracting her from friendly banter with a stranger. When Latasha travels by herself, she notices a marked difference in how many impromptu conversations people initiate with her. “I also always try to stay in airbnbs, homestays or with friends of friends,” Latasha explains. This gives her the option of friendly human interaction if she’s had a day of solitary sightseeing or people watching.

For some of us, solo is our preferred method of travel. And why wouldn’t it be? You get to set your own schedule. Change it at a moment’s whim. You end up going to countries that truly intrigue you and not just places that are chosen because of compromise. You are beholden to no one’s budget but your own. No one’s accommodation idiosyncrasies. If you are a budget traveler who never spends more than $30 a night on an airbnb, then you can have your basic room with sporadic hot water. If you are unapologetically bourgie, then an American chain hotel will welcome you into its arms with thick, fluffy mattresses and 24-hour room service.

Aliki, a single British traveler, packed a bag and left London to tour Southeast Asia when she was only 19 years old. She went to Thailand and followed that up with Vietnam before checking out Cambodia and Laos. She was alone in each country and was not a part of a university study abroad or any similar program. “I still go on holidays with friends, family or my boyfriend,” she says, “but the majority of my travel is done alone.” Like the many single women I meet who travel by themselves more so than not, Aliki is not surprised that women who are fiercely independent in their daily lives would fully embrace navigating foreign destinations without a companion.

Between Ambra, Natavia, Latasha, Aliki and I, we have seen over half of the world. We have done so without any attempts being made on our lives. No sexual assaults to report. (Though we have had our share of inappropriate propositions from oddly confident men who took the L when told no and simply went away.) We’ve had no traumatic “close calls” that left us hesitant to take on the world alone again.

We have all traveled much farther than Atlanta. Much farther than North America.

I have featured black women who identify as polyamorous three times on my podcast. I was prompted to pursue the stories of the non-monogamous because as a woman who was coming to accept that happily- ever-after marital bliss didn’t appeal to me, I was curious about how other women formed partnerships that were not necessarily defined by getting on an escalator with one nice man as you both cruised to the floor that housed the chapel and shared mortgage payments. I was certain my ideal love structure did not involve multiple partners, but had a feeling that these women who had the courage to claim the love structure that best suited them could offer valuable insight into how I and other women could create the romantic lives we wanted instead of the one we were supposed to want.

Evita, Olivia and Shira did help me unburden myself from the shoulds that black women are expected to carry on our shoulders as we shape shift to fit what the dominant culture and our community dictate is the best way for us to be in the world. However, what was even more invaluable were the messages I got from listeners after each woman shared her journey to ethical non-monogamy. A common message in my inbox was: “I thought I was the only one! I used to think something was wrong with me!” When I engaged in further conversation with these women who thanked me for letting them know they were not alone, there was another trend that was all too familiar. It was the tendency to be advised on how they could be cured of their allergic reactions to monogamy.

“You just haven’t met the right man yet.”

Woman after woman relayed having intimate discussions with sisterfriends and aunties about how suffocating it felt to commit themselves to only one penis, no matter how kind and loving that penis was to them. How they noticed that they were at their happiest when they were not trying to be in one relationship at a time, restricting themselves to just one emotional connection with one man until, for whatever reason, that relationship ended and they got on the next escalator with the next nice man. The sisterfriends listened and chuckled. The aunties nodded their heads, a non-verbal agreement that they, too, weren’t so sure they were committed to the fantasy of what they should want, either. It didn’t take long for the chuckle and the head nod to turn into admonishments that they should be more mature and patient and just believe that the right man was out there. “I hear what you’re saying,” they’d be told. “But, you just haven’t met the right man yet.”

This advice to hold off on making proclamations about what best suits you until you have fallen in love with the “right” man. It fascinates me as the thinking behind it is both illogical and condescending. The women who were messaging me were well over the age of consent. They were not in their teens, twenties or even thirties. They were not nursing their first broken heart, bitter at how painful love gone awry could be. They had tried loving the way they should love for years and came to realize that what they wanted made them happier than what they were told they should want. Yet, it was assumed that this knowledge of themselves was incomplete. It had not been sufficiently tested by an encounter with the magical penis that would cause them to redraw the conclusion they had come to after a lifetime of loving.

Why put so much pressure on the penis? It is expected to transform so many women who have so many desires they are not supposed to have. For the woman drawn to other women, the “right” penis is expected to lure her back to heteronormativity. For the woman who is only mildly tolerant of small children, the magic wand that is the male penis is expected to convince her that she should give motherhood a chance. For the single woman who relishes solitude and autonomy, one encounter with the right penis is supposed to send her into a fit of matrimonial frenzy, all of a sudden consumed with thoughts of diamond rings and white dresses. Is the penis really capable of all of this, though? Maybe the penis is just one little organ that provides women with momentary pleasure and the man to whom it is attached a mere mortal with no power to change the desires of the woman who loves him.

I can understand why so many men and women would believe that the peen is all powerful. I have participated in some questionable shenanigans on account of the peen. I have caught flights across continents to be closer to the peen. I have left angry, tear-filled voicemail messages trying to get myself unquit by the peen. I have even told half truths and outright lies in order to appease the peen. So, yes, for a straight lady, the penis can be quite convincing. It doesn’t take long for a happy hour table full of peen-appreciative ladies to swap stories of the many times they have compromised themselves behind some earth-shattering peen.

But, the power of the peen has its limits. To tell us straight girls that its power supercedes our own knowledge of ourselves is bold. And irritating. “I mean, I was sitting up there saying to her I have finally realized what makes me happy and she was telling me that I could not possibly know what I was talking about because I had not loved enough of the right men.” One of my listeners who had decided to “come out” as non-monogamous to a friend was the most clear on what this you-have-not-met-the-right-man retort really says to women. It asserts that your mind is not your own. Your decisions regarding your body are not your’s to make. You cannot claim what is best for your body and your life in the absence of a male partner. If you have had numerous male partners and still reached this conclusion about your life and your body, then you have not sufficiently tested your hypothesis about what truly makes you happy. “Just one more man,” this line of thinking says. “Yes, you have used your own intuition and life experiences to deduce that monogamy is not your ministry, but have you considered this other penis possibly waiting for you somewhere in the future?” Those of us who make choices exclusively on what we know is best for us are weary of this reasoning that reduces us to children who need permission to make the most rudimentary decisions.

Let’s allow the peen the right to have its one job. It does that job well. We do not need to burden it with tasks beyond its pay grade and level of expertise.